


hell or full circle

by buckstiel



Category: Campaign: Skyjacks (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Other, Post Burza Nyth, Sexual Tension, The Unknown Consequences of Necromancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-01 06:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20810765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: No one's ever really gone.





	hell or full circle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prim_the_Amazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/gifts).

> title from lyrics i misheard in "go places" by the new pornographers but liked enough to use anyway
> 
> thank you to feraldanvers for the beta :*

The first time Jonnit saw him, he thought it was a trick of the light. The setting sun was lingering a moment longer than it should have at the spot just above the horizon, casting the whole ship in a thick, golden glow—unless, of course, it caught the tip of a cresting wave for a clip of blindness. Everyone wandered the deck with narrowed eyes until it passed. Everyone had claimed to see something odd at that time of the afternoon at some point, none of them believable.

So when Jonnit caught a glimpse of Dref’s familiar figure staring out over the sea with the sun shining right through him, he tried not to think anything of it. _Grief does weird things to people_, Travis had said with an eye roll. _Nothing’s right for a while. _

He tried to brush it off. His head wasn’t right, and it hadn’t exactly been _a while _yet. It was his head and the sunset and it was best to move on.

(Though it was a better image of Dref than the one that had gripped at his shirt in death on the floor of the hotel. So maybe he didn’t try as hard to ignore it as he could have. If he had to pick between the two of them, he’d prefer the hazy haloed Dref standing tall on the _Uhuru _to sit behind his eyelids when he couldn’t sleep.)

The second time, Dref spoke to him.

So he couldn’t really wave it away.

Figuratively, at least.

“What are you doing? Get your hand out of my stomach!”

“I didn’t know if you were a smoke monster or something!” Jonnit whispered, pulling his hand out of the boundary of Dref’s abdomen.

“That was your first guess?” Dref said. “Not ghost?”

“I don’t know, man, things are always getting weirder and weirder around here.”

For one: Dref’s lack of stutter and the straighter hold of his posture. It was enough to curl suspicion in Jonnit’s gut--what if this wasn’t Dref at all, but some further plot of the Youngbloods? They’d ensured Tiberius wouldn’t be a problem for the foreseeable future before taking off from Burza Nyth, but he had cronies, right? He had the rest of his family, and--

“It’s really me,” Dref sighed. “A week before we landed in Wolfstooth, you barged in on me working on the captain while you were sleepwalking. Talking about… the new year festival in Akaron.”

“Right.” They stared at each other silently, the early morning bustle of the _Uhuru _gearing up for another day. So this _was_ Dref--Jonnit could accept that much, recognizing the man he’d shared the last tense six months of his life with, but his gut hadn’t been wrong. More of Alistair Youngblood overshadowed the quirks and tics he’d become accustomed to. There wasn’t much use in keeping up the act in death, after all.

“So…” Jonnit said slowly. “What’s up? How are… things?”

“Are you asking me how death is?”

“Well--I guess?”

Dref snorted right as a gaggle of the sick orphans ran by, but they paid him no mind. “For all the answers I received crossing over, none of them prepared me for this.”

“Being a ghost?”

“That’s--” Dref plucked his glasses off his nose and started to clean them before catching himself. “I knew it was a risk. Travis does have my heart.”

“Oh gosh, I didn’t--I didn’t realize something like _that _could cause ghosts. I didn’t know you felt that way about him--”

It wasn’t something that Dref had ever done while Jonnit knew him alive, but it still pushed Alistair away into something more familiar--a withering gaze crafted from the various incredulous and impatient looks Travis and Gable had offered everyone on the ship at some point or another.

“Oh you mean--your actual--” He cleared his throat. “Right, yeah. Of course.”

“You know--”

Not much light had yet reached over the horizon from the rising sun, but that hardly stopped the sudden shadow from sliding over where they stood. The dark was a shade deeper than the shadows cast from the ropes and featherweave, the kind he’d only seen in the wake of Orimar Vale.

Surely enough, he was right behind Jonnit, glancing blankly over his shoulder toward Dref.

And Dref just _grinned_, and with a sincerity Jonnit couldn’t readily remember ever witnessing from him.

“Oh _Captain_, we really must be getting back to go over those--ah, numbers,” Travis called from behind him. “You know? Like what you would do with a quartermaster?”

“Really smooth,” Gable grumbled, their head visible over the looming corpse of the captain.

Orimar offered Dref a wink and a slow nod before turning around; Jonnit watched his boots grind unnaturally against the wood as he turned, the pinpoint precision with which he stopped to catch Jonnit’s eye. And in that moment, he was overwhelmed by a sense of satisfaction that shifted into pride, then bright anticipation and back again until all three melded into a singular warm light at the center of him.

It dissipated with another wink, and then he was lumbering back toward Gable and Travis.

“H--hey! Wait you two!” He waved to get their attention. “Look!” He posed with both arms outstretched, gesturing to Dref’s ghostly form beside him.

“Yes, it’s a very lovely sunrise,” Travis said with his particular verbal eyeroll. “Just like the other million I’ve seen. Thank you.” He put a hand on Orimar's back and steered them both toward the captain’s quarters.

Gable grimaced. “The purples are especially nice this morning, Jonnit. Thank you.” They ran off to catch up.

“They can’t see me.”

Jonnit glanced over at Dref, who was leaning into the side of the deck so far that a few inches of his arm and chest sank into the wood. “Wh..why--”

Dref tapped at the center of his translucent forehead three times.

And vanished.

*

Dref could only manifest himself like that for short bursts of time, one minute watching the wave of understanding wash over Jonnit’s face and the next nestled squarely in the ether stretched between his preserved heart in Travis’ ribcage and the glowing bit of life humming in Orimar’s.

He could see everything this way--less clearly if his heart and Orimar were further apart, but in the same room like they were now, it was as if his body hadn’t been destroyed by the vengeful crusade of his brother.

“When you said you would keep an eye on the captain, I thought that meant _you actually would keep an eye on him_\--”

“How was I supposed to know he was going to wander off?” Travis waltzed over to the desk where an open wine bottle sat beside a glass that looked like it had been knocked over in a hurry. A number of papers were strewn on the floor and speckled with burgundy.

“No. No…” Gable pulled one of the chairs from its spot in the corner and sat in his backwards, still staring Travis down with their glower that had always forced Dref’s pulse a few beats faster. “I’m not pretending that you’re that stupid. Not after everything we’ve seen since the _Civility_. Especially not since--”

“Fine, fine, my god.” He hopped up on the desk and started pouring himself a _very_ full glass of wine. “You’re no fun anymore.”

“Was I once?”

Travis didn’t answer, and their gaze slid over to where Orimar stood near the bookcases, turning over the Heart of the Bandit Queen in his palm. Both ends of Dref’s abstracted senses in this state were lighting up with bursts of that pleasant anxiety he’d picked up back in Burza Nyth, back in his actual body; the end tied to the captain was ready to smolder like a fuse.

But the captain didn’t have a heartbeat. Travis did, and it pounded against Dref’s own still stuck inside him _somehow_, managing to knock against a skull Dref no longer had. The feeling was the same, the pressure, the warmth pooling down where his stomach would be.

“I misspoke,” Travis said finally over the edge of his glass, his lips already stained by the wine. “You were always a curmudgeon. I mean, why else do you think Hildred turned down your offer to join our crew--”

Gable stood so quickly that the chair toppled over, legs cracking against the floor.

“Did I touch a nerve?”

“Only every _bussing_ day on this ship--”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

Atop the desk, Travis set down his glass and crossed his legs. Smirked--like he was daring them to hear the thumping in his chest and notice the reddening tinge on the tips of his ears, because he was. Dref knew it as soon as soon as Travis felt it.

Even now, having seen the other side of death, the otherworldly way Gable moved sent an approximation of chills through Dref--they crossed the gap between them and Travis, slapped the emptied wine glass to the floor with a shatter, and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket so hard that he was lifted off the desk.

“That glass was expensive,” he said, voice wavering in time with his composure.

“Good.”

Travis wove his hand through Gable’s grip on him until it found the back of their head, pulling himself up to kiss them--sloppily, from what Dref could sense, but it was enough to make Gable drop him back onto the desk in surprise, pinning him between their knees and kissing him back.

Also sloppily, he might add. And it wasn’t anything more he needed to experience, not today.

Dref slid himself along the ethereal string until he was fully in Orimar’s aura; Travis faded away to the very edge of his awareness, and he let himself ease into the growing center of light in the captain’s chest. He could see an image of the Bandit Queen standing at the bow of the _Uhuru_, wind wrapping her ribboned hair around her face, the entire memory framed with warmth and sadness and a yearning that overtook it all.

_Jonnit is going to rival her fleet one day_, Orimar’s voice rumbled, silent to all aboard except the two of them.

_I’ve seen as much_, Dref said.

_I know you have. _The image shifted--to a view over Orimar’s shoulder as he and the Bandit Queen fought off Red Feathers back-to-back, to her silhouette in his quarters against a sunset, to the flagship of her fleet where another Red Feather captain slid off her bloodied sword.

_This doesn’t bother you?_ He didn’t have to use his arm to gesture to whatever Travis and Gable were doing at the moment.

_It’s fine. _(It was going to be fine, eventually.) _It’s good they’re still living their lives. You have to accept certain things when you die._

Orimar’s laugh could shake the glassware in their cabinets when he was alive, and it felt no different on this other plane. _No you do not! You taught me that, you know. Look at us._

He wasn’t going to respond to that.

A few silent minutes passed, and Orimar sighed. _You’ve seen the road for Jonnit, you say?_

_Every step._

Loving pride rushed through Orimar and crashed into Dref in a burst, enough to drown in. As it subsided, he sensed the captain sidling up next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. _I want to hear it all. _

**Author's Note:**

> written as part of the donation exchanges for oneshot/campaign's host and his family. details in [this thread.](https://twitter.com/yavin_iv/status/1174117134152228866?s=20)


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